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Alaska, USA · North America · northern hemisphere
Denali is at its best for northern lights in February to March and September to October. Good but not prime in January, November and December. Crowds peak in July and bottom out in January.
| J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wildlife | 15 | 15 | 15 | 42 | 67 | 90 | 90 | 90 | 67 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Hiking | 14 | 13 | 15 | 42 | 66 | 91 | 90 | 89 | 68 | 16 | 13 | 13 |
| Northern Lights | 69 | 93 | 92 | 42 | 17 | 13 | 13 | 12 | 86 | 94 | 65 | 65 |
| Crowds |
Swipe the table sideways for the rest of the year.
One road, 92 miles long — and severed at Mile 43 since the Pretty Rocks landslide in August 2021. The replacement bridge is now finished and the Park Service expects full bus service along the whole road to resume next season, with bus and campground reservations opening on 1 December. Until then buses go no further than the slide.
A few marked trails near the entrance, otherwise trackless tundra. A guide is worth it off-trail.
Counting on seeing the mountain. Denali makes its own weather and shows itself perhaps one day in three — people spend a week here and never see it.
Mid-June to mid-August. The buses run from late May to mid-September, so the season is wider than the crowd
The park is a bus day, six to twelve hours round trip, which is a lot for small children. There are almost no marked trails — this is trackless tundra walking by design.
The Nenana Canyon strip at the entrance is expensive and seasonal. Healy is ten minutes north and much cheaper; Talkeetna, two hours south, is the flightseeing base and a far nicer town.
The park road is unploughed and the park is effectively closed. Temperatures below −30°C are routine.Jan · Feb · Mar · Oct · Nov · Dec
Kept out of the score on purpose. Averaging a rare catastrophe into a monthly number would tell you something false; the warning is the honest form.
Denali deliberately has very few trails: you are meant to get off the bus and walk across open tundra. That is wonderful and requires proper navigation, bear awareness and river-crossing judgement.
0 is this destination’s own quietest month and 100 its busiest. The scale never compares one destination to another. Source: NPS DENA
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